Muslim students kicked out of church for challenging anti-Islam speaker

Muslim students kicked out of church for challenging anti-Islam speaker

31st Mar 2013

Fikri Rahmat and Elshan Mirzazade say they were kicked out of the Church when they quizzed Walid Shoebat about his Islamophobic views.

Elham Asaad Buaras

Two Muslim students were kicked out of a church in Minnesota, US, when they challenged a well-known anti-Islam speaker.

The foreign exchange students were forced out of the Assembly of God Church in Perham during a question and answer session following a speech by Walid Shoebat.

Shoebat, a former Muslim, now Christian, says he is a former terrorist and claims to be an anti-terrorism expert.

Shoebat, a Palestinian American, tours the US speaking to churches and schools to lecture that terrorism and Islam are inseparable.

Born in the West Bank, Shoebat says he was a Palestinian Liberation Organisation terrorist in his youth who helped firebomb an Israeli bank in Bethlehem and spent time in an Israeli jail.

Shoebat continues his speaking circuit despite being exposed as a fraud in 2011.

Tel Aviv HQ of Bank Leumi told CNN investigators it had no record of a firebombing at its former Bethlehem branch. The Israeli police said there is no record of the bombing, and the prison where Shoebat says he was held “for a few weeks” for inciting anti-Israel demo says it has no record of him being incarcerated there either.

Fikri Rahmat from Indonesia and Elshan Mirzazade from Azerbhjan, heard that Shoebat was speaking at the church, they wanted to go.

“Our message is not to argue with him, but to say to people that what he says is wrong,” said Mirzazade

He added: “They ushered us out and asked us to leave and we said, ‘OK, OK.’ So when I was leaving, I shouted, Good way of promoting peace, bravo, bravo.’”

Rahmat said Shoebat “got mad because maybe he was afraid of the truth. One of his companions came to us and said, ‘Out, Out,’ rudely to us.

The Muslim News Awards for Excellence 2015 was held on March in London to acknowledge British Muslim and non-Muslim contributions to the society.

The Muslim News Awards for Excellence 2015 was held on March in London to acknowledge British Muslim and non-Muslim contributions to the society.

The Muslim News Awards for Excellence event is to acknowledge British Muslim and non-Muslim contributions to society. Over 850 people from diverse background, Muslim and non-Muslim, attended the gala dinner.